Provinciale Statenverkiezingen 2023
How do political campaigns target voters?
Methodology
In collaboration with Who Targets Me, we monitored over 1000 Dutch political advertisers during the 2023 Provinciale Statenverkiezingen (Provincial elections) to better understand how campaigns use different targeting methods made available by Meta. To do this, we used data from the Meta Ad Library, using the new ‘Audience’ data which gives some detail on how pages target their ads.
To better understand the regional election, we kept only advertisers who:
- Advertised in the last 7 days (March 4th - March 10th 2023)
- Advertised in the last 30 days (February 9th - March 10th 2023)
Note: Meta only provides 7, 30 and 90 days windows for the targeting data in their Ad Library. Meta’s data also lags by a few days. We will update this report as soon as new data is available.
Topline Statistics
Meta
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
In total, political parties spend €466,191 and ran 5091 ad copies on Meta in this timeframe.
| Number of Advertisers | Top Spenders | Number of Ads | Total Spend | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CDA |
34 |
|
629 |
€69,438 |
PvdA |
37 |
|
541 |
€67,328 |
GroenLinks |
21 |
|
265 |
€64,396 |
SP |
12 |
|
341 |
€54,465 |
VVD |
45 |
|
739 |
€35,493 |
Volt Nederland |
4 |
|
799 |
€29,391 |
FvD |
4 |
|
49 |
€29,136 |
BBB |
7 |
|
85 |
€24,647 |
PvdD |
14 |
|
256 |
€20,880 |
D66 |
21 |
|
218 |
€16,178 |
BVNL |
7 |
|
72 |
€14,801 |
Ja21 |
4 |
|
301 |
€8,263 |
PVV |
10 |
|
60 |
€7,053 |
ChristenUnie |
18 |
|
184 |
€6,911 |
50PLUS |
5 |
|
85 |
€6,585 |
DENK |
3 |
|
380 |
€5,405 |
SGP |
5 |
|
59 |
€3,618 |
Alliantie |
2 |
|
28 |
€2,203 |
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
In total, political parties spend €270,429 and ran 3770 ad copies on Meta in this timeframe.
| Number of Advertisers | Top Spenders | Number of Ads | Total Spend | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CDA |
31 |
|
596 |
€59,334 |
PvdA |
33 |
|
441 |
€37,216 |
GroenLinks |
18 |
|
211 |
€35,195 |
VVD |
38 |
|
632 |
€24,071 |
PvdD |
13 |
|
183 |
€15,796 |
FvD |
3 |
|
39 |
€15,515 |
Volt Nederland |
4 |
|
601 |
€15,498 |
SP |
10 |
|
162 |
€14,343 |
BVNL |
7 |
|
60 |
€11,708 |
D66 |
21 |
|
118 |
€11,549 |
BBB |
7 |
|
46 |
€9,789 |
Ja21 |
4 |
|
152 |
€4,562 |
50PLUS |
5 |
|
56 |
€4,252 |
ChristenUnie |
17 |
|
127 |
€4,167 |
DENK |
3 |
|
246 |
€2,686 |
SGP |
4 |
|
44 |
€2,146 |
PVV |
7 |
|
37 |
€1,831 |
Alliantie |
2 |
|
19 |
€771 |
For Google platforms, data accessed via the Google Transparency Report provides exact spending on how much money was spent by parties in last 30 days. The table below shows spending in the timerange between February 11th to March 13th 2023.
| Number of Ads | Top Spenders | Total Spend | |
|---|---|---|---|
FvD |
20 |
|
€64,750 |
GroenLinks |
126 |
|
€52,800 |
Volt Nederland |
988 |
|
€36,250 |
D66 |
134 |
|
€33,900 |
CDA |
177 |
|
€26,750 |
SP |
39 |
|
€24,450 |
BBB |
145 |
|
€22,600 |
VVD |
100 |
|
€14,600 |
PvdA |
20 |
|
€10,350 |
JA21 |
20 |
|
€8,450 |
DENK |
24 |
|
€5,850 |
50PLUS |
140 |
|
€5,800 |
ChristenUnie |
213 |
|
€1,500 |
BVNL |
10 |
|
€1,200 |
Spending per Targeting Criteria
How much did campaigns spend on different targeting methods?
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
Overall
By Party
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
Overall
By Party
Top Targeted Audiences
Here, we show the top targeted audiences for each party (ranked by amount of Euro spend). Most (but not all) of these audiences are “interest” audiences, i.e. the parties targeted people interested in “Books” or “Politics”.
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
Top Contested Audiences
Here, we show the top most contested audiences, i.e. where all parties have spent considerable amounts of money competing to reach voters with the same interests. Most (but not all) of these audiences are “interest” audiences, i.e. the parties targeted people interested in “Books” or “Politics”. In each row on the right hand side, you can see how much in total was spend on that specific target audience.
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
Age Targeting
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
Gender Targeting
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
Education Targeting
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
Job Targeting
February 9th - March 10th 2023 (Last 30 days)
March 4th - March 10th 2023 (Last 7 days)
ZIP Code Targeting
The following maps show ZIP code targeting for a few parties that spend a lot on this kind of targeting method. It’s important to note that the spending here “overlaps”, i.e. one cannot sum up across all different ZIP codes as some targeted ZIP codes have a shared budget.